Saturday

The Religion WAR (03-03)

Reading between the lines, thinking outside the box, and seeing the forest...
 
 
 
    Pope Benedict XVI has emerged as one of Italy's most popular authors, after selling more than 2.5 million copies of his latest book in just over a year. The sales of Jesus of Nazareth, the 1st part of a 2-volume biography of Christ, has convinced Helder, the largest Catholic publisher in Europe, to reprint a series of Benedict's earlier scholarship.
    Benedict is currently working on his 3rd encyclical, tentatively titled "Love in the Truth", and on the 2nd part of Jesus of Nazareth. He is expected to finish both works over his summer holidays, which he usually devotes to non-stop writing.
    [WAR: "Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Yahshua Messiah as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist." (2John 1:7)]
 
    Christianity isn't a mere foreign import that is alien to Asian culture, but rather the truth that resonates with the law written on the human heart, says Benedict XVI. He said this upon receiving in audience today the bishops of Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, in Rome for their 5-yearly visit.
    "Happily, the peoples of Asia display an intense yearning for God. In handing on to them the message that you also received, you are sowing the seeds of evangelization in fertile ground. If the faith is to flourish, however, it needs to strike deep roots in Asian soil, lest it be perceived as a foreign import, alien to the culture and traditions of your people. ... In particular, you need to ensure that the Christian Gospel is in no way confused in their minds with secular principles associated with the Enlightenment."
 
 
 
 
    In a personal message to Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II, Pope Benedict XVI thanked the Russian prelate for his "commitment to fostering relations between Catholics and Orthodox."
    Cardinal Kasper, the president of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, delivered the Pope's message when he met with Patriarch Alexei in Moscow on May 30. Cardinal Kasper was in Russia for a series of meetings with both Catholic and Orthodox officials.
    Cardinal Kasper's meeting with Patriarch Alexei produced no major announcements. The Vatican has deliberately downplayed expectations for the visit, saying that the cardinal traveled to Russia in an effort to learn more about the life of the Russian Orthodox Church.
 
    Showing its support for the UN-sponsored World Environment Day, the Vatican has released the Ten Commandments of the environment, inspired by the Christian vision of creation. Bishop Crepaldi, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, presented the 10 points on the opening day of Milan's first festival of the environment, which began Wednesday.
    He told Vatican Radio that the document is an attempt "to explain in 10 points the most important aspects of the chapter on the environment in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church."
    He added that is an effort to enlighten Christian communities, groups and movements on "the very rich social magisterium of the Church on the specific question of the environment and its protection."
 
 
 
    Germans fancying lunch in the Tower of Babel, a visit to an "original size" Noah's Ark or a multimedia depiction of the final battle between Good and Evil will soon be able to head to a planned biblical amusement park.
    Under plans announced by a group of Swiss evangelical Christians, Genesis Park, a theme park based on the Bible, will open at a yet to be chosen site in Germany by 2012.
 
 
 
    Each year on the first Monday of Lent, the people of the tiny Greek town of Tyrnavos go crazy about penises, singing lewd songs and urging passersby to kiss their model phallusses. The pagan fertility festival is one of the most famous parties in Greece. The festival is in honor of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, madness and ecstasy. Phallic worship was popular in ancient Rome, Egypt, India and Japan.
    (Wiki: The Ancient Egyptians related the cult of phallus with Osiris. When Osiris' body was cut in 13 pieces, Seth scattered them all over Egypt and his wife Isis retrieved all of them except one, his penis, which was swallowed by a fish. The phallus was a symbol of fertility.)
 
    The cathedrals of Chartres in France and St Paul's in London embody not only different aesthetics, but different versions of God and Man—one all shadowy ineffability, the other all daylight rationalism.
    It is also, as 2 new books show, that Chartres and St Paul's were part of the same philosophical conversation, though at different points along its continuum—about intellectual freedom versus authority, about reason and faith.
 
    European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso in a ceremony on Wednesday helprf dedicate a Brussels temple as the "Great Synagogue of Europe," amid prayers for EU leaders to act justly.
    The synagogue - an 1878 Romanesque-style building in Brussels' central Rue de la Regence - is to become a symbolic focal point for Judaism in Europe, a little like St Peter's Basilica in Rome is for Roman Catholics.
 
 
 
    An Israeli rabbi has declared giraffe meat and milk to be kosher. "The giraffe has all the signs of a ritually pure animal, and the milk forms curds, which strengthened that view." Giraffe meat is also considered ritually pure because the animal has a cloven hoof and chews the cud.
 
    Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah described himself as "a voice for coexistence and dialogue" during a conference of Islamic legal scholars in Mecca this week. King Abdullah spoke to the 500 ulemas, or arbiters of shari'a law, about the proposal he had unveiled in March for dialogue among the leaders of the world's great monotheistic faiths.
 
A critique of radicalism is building within the heart of the Muslim world
    Important Muslim thinkers, including some on whom Osama bin Laden depended for support, have rejected his vision of jihad. Once sympathetic publics in the Middle East and South Asia are growing disillusioned.
    A new vision of Islam, neither bin Laden's nor that of the traditionalists who preceded him, is taking shape. Momentum is building within the Muslim world to re-examine what had seemed immutable tenets of the faith, to challenge what had been taken as literal truths and to open wide the doors of interpretation (ijtihad) that some schools of Islam tried to close centuries ago.
 
    Work has begun to restore a historic obelisk in Ethiopia's ancient city of Axum, after it was returned from Italy. The Axum Obelisk, a symbol of Ethiopia's identity, was looted by troops in 1937 during Italy's brief occupation of Abyssinia. Italy returned the 1,700-year-old monument in 2005, after decades of negotiations between the countries.
 
 
 
    Nuclear war will begin this coming Thursday, or sooner, according to the latest prediction of self-proclaimed prophet Yisrayl "Buffalo Bill" Hawkins, the founder of the House of Yahweh in Abilene, Texas.
    "It could be turned loose before then," Hawkins told 20/20 for a report broadcasted Friday night. "You're going to see this very soon, really soon," he said.
 
Paranoid Protestant Prophet Preaching Poop...
    In his sermon, "The Final Dictator," John Hagee described the Antichrist as a seductive figure with "fierce features." He will be "a blasphemer and a homosexual," the pastor announced.
    Then, Hagee boomed, "There's a phrase in Scripture used solely to identify the Jewish people. It suggests that this man [the Antichrist] is at least going to be partially Jewish, as was Adolph Hitler, as was Karl Marx."
    [WAR: Puh-leaze! This "prophet" is himself an antimessiah, because he thinks that Yahshua was "God in the flesh" -- a god-man that was "fully God and fully human."]
 
    Senator Joe I Lieberman says he'll speak at a July conference hosted by Pastor John Hagee. In a statement, Lieberman says he considers some of Hagee's comments unacceptable and hurtful, but will judge him on his life's work fighting anti-Semitism and building bridges between Christians and Jews.
 
    The hallmark and the fanatical drive of the left for these past centuries has been in devoting tireless energy to bringing about, as rapidly as they can, their own egalitarian, collectivist version of a Kingdom of God on Earth. In short, this truly monstrous movement is what might be called "left-post-millennialist."
 
    The repeated references to James highlight an often overlooked and controversial book of the Bible. For centuries its supposed conflict with Paul's letters and the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone relegated it to the sidelines of biblical scholarship, and only recently has it enjoyed more attention.
    "'Faith without works is dead' translates politically into 'rhetoric without action is dead,'" said Kevin Coe, coauthor of The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America.
 
Undercover with the Xian Right
    I had joined Cornerstone — a megachurch in the Texas Hill Country — to get a look inside the evangelical mind-set that gave the country 8 years of George W. Bush.
    The church's pastor, John Hagee, is one of the most influential evangelical preachers in the country — not because his ministry is so very large but because of his near-absolute conquest of a very trendy niche in the market: Christian Zionism. The whole idea behind Christian Zionism is to align America with the nation of Israel so as to "hurry God up" in his efforts to bring about Armageddon.
 
    In this presidential election year, many Americans are wondering how to vote – or even if they should vote. Into this quandary enters a new book by David Klinghoffer of the Discovery Institute with the audacious title "How Would God Vote: Why the Bible Commands You to Be a Conservative." My reaction? Color me skeptical.
 
Poison or paranoid paganism?...
    The Planning and Zoning Commission of Yuma, Arizona, denied a use permit to a church because, in part, it worried that the church would cost the city liquor license money. City staff informed the commission in a report that the church would not be "beneficial to overall economic health" of the area, a condition necessary for granting a conditional use permit.
 
    A former employee of a Tennessee insurance company is objecting to a "ceremony" held at the construction site of a new building because it called on "the gods on the structure" for "good fortune and fertility." The report on the ceremony came in an e-mail from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee, which is constructing a new nearly $300 million office building at Chattanooga.
 
    "Don't believe in God?" a bright blue billboard with images of puffy white clouds asks. "You are not alone." The 20-by-60-foot sign alongside I-95 was designed by a group of area atheists as an invitation to join the Greater Philadelphia Coalition of Reason, or PhillyCoR, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
    Steve Rade, president of Wireless Accessories, Inc., gave the $22,500 to fund the billboard May 1, and he plans to keep it there until the end of August. He grew up as a Jew, but he told the Inquirer he is "absolutely certain" God and eternal life do not exist. His father was a synagogue president and raised his children to regularly attend Shabbat services.
 
    Thousands of stone Ten Commandments monuments on highly visible properties in communities across the nation, millions of smaller plaques in Christian and Jewish homes, and a massive bronze showing the biblical image of Moses holding the stones on which God wrote… The target of the ACLU? Nope. Thanks to the ACLU!
    The executive director for Project Moses says his organization, only a few years old, is well on its way to reaching many of its goals of placing Ten Commandments monuments all over the nation, and it's because of a complaint from the ACLU.
    [WAR: "These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. (But) these people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." (Deu 6:6 / Isa 29:13)]
 
    How Hollywood's A-list stars are bringing the cult of Kabbalah to inner-city schools in London. Is it sinister or safe?
 
    Christianity is being discriminated against by the Government in favour of Islam and other minority faiths, according to a landmark Church of England report. The damning critique of Labour, which is endorsed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, says ministers are only paying "lip service" to the Anglican Church while "focusing intently" on other religions.
 
    Here is the homily given Wednesday by Cardinal O'Brien at a Mass in the Crypt of the House of Commons, in which he addressed members of Parliament and the House of Lords.
 
    Forty years after the sexual revolution in France, the country is confronted with a question it thought it would never have to ask again: Can a husband annul a marriage because his new wife is not a virgin?
    It has also sharpened the focus on much broader questions that all of Europe is grappling with: How much should European countries adapt their moral and legal codes to their growing Muslim communities, and how much should those communities be expected to conform to Western norms?
 
 
 
    One thing I keep an eye on is the end of the world predictions that pop up every so often. Everyone from Jehovah Witnesses to 7th Day Adventists to Fundamentalist Mormons to end of the world Christian groups is jumping on the bandwagon to "prophecy" their version of the end times.
 
What the Gospel of Judas really says
    I regret to say that the National Geographic Society has opened itself to serious criticism regarding its publication of the now-famous Gospel of Judas.
 
    I've always been troubled by the Philistine hemorrhoids. The Hebrew word is 'opalim (Mylpe). That was supposedly their affliction when they captured the Ark of the Covenant and placed it before a statue of their god Dagon.
    These 'opalim have caused scholars lots of problems. The root of the word is 'pl (lpe, or Ophel, as in the acropolis [upper city] of ancient Jerusalem), which means "high" or "rise," hence a swelling.
    But there is something strange, even a bit peculiar about 'opalim. Is it a vulgarity? Is it simply too intimate for use in a holy text? Or does it perhaps mean something entirely different?
    Based on recently recovered archaeological evidence, I believe that 'opalim refers not to hemorrhoids or tumors or the bubonic plague, but to the male sexual organ. The Philistines were afflicted in their membra virile.
 
The God of angel armies
    I was reading the prophet Jeremiah a few weeks ago when I ran across a passage that referred to God as "the Lord Almighty." To be honest, it didn't resonate. There's something too religious about the phrase; it sounds churchy, sanctimonious. The Lawd Almiiiighty. It sounds like something your grandmother would say when you came into her kitchen covered in mud.
    I found myself curious about what the actual phrase means in Hebrew. Might we have lost something in the translation? So I turned to the front of the version I was using for an explanation. Here is what the editors said:
    "Because for most readers today the phrases 'the Lord of hosts' and 'God of hosts' have little meaning, this version renders them 'the Lord Almighty' and 'God Almighty.' These renderings convey the sense of the Hebrew [Yahweh Tsaba], namely, 'he who is sovereign over all the 'hosts' (powers) in heaven and on Earth, especially over the "hosts" (armies) of Israel." No, they don't. They don't even come close.
    The Hebrew means "the God of angel armies," "the God of the armies who fight for his people." The God who is at war. Does "Lord Almighty" convey "the God who is at war"? Not to me, it doesn't. Not to anyone I've asked. It sounds like "the God who is up there but still in charge." Powerful, in control.
    The God of angel armies sounds like the one who would roll up his sleeves, take up sword and shield to break down gates of bronze, and cut through bars of iron to rescue me. (Waking the Dead, p.160)
 
 

posted by The Daily Warrior | 9:45 AM